Friday, February 23, 2007

The Beloved Disciple Goes Fishing

To clarify my post yesterday on some recent reviews of Richard Bauckham's book, J.P. Holding has told me that he agrees with me in seeing Bauckham's theory about the authorship of the fourth gospel as the second best option. He still thinks that John the son of Zebedee was the author, though his guest reviewer apparently was convinced by Bauckham's theory. J.P. Holding also made a good point to me that's easy to overlook, something I didn't mention in my review of Bauckham's book. John 21 has the beloved disciple going fishing, which is consistent with the son of Zebedee, who was a fisherman. So, to add that point to what I said in my review of Bauckham, the theory that some other John wrote the fourth gospel requires us to conclude that there was another John who:

- was also a close disciple of Jesus

- was also close to Peter

- was also involved in fishing

And this other John became widely confused with John the son of Zebedee, to the point where, by Bauckham's admission, the son of Zebedee was universally thought to be the author of the fourth gospel as early as the third century.

3 comments:

  1. Was it from here that I followed a link taking me to an essay in which it was suggested that Lazarus was the author of the Fourth Gospel and the beloved disciple? If it is and I am being repetitious forgive me. Ben Withrington's blog

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  2. SuzW,

    I’ve written about my initial impressions of Witherington’s theory elsewhere:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/02/initial-impressions-of-ben.html

    It should be noted that although scholars like Richard Bauckham, Ben Witherington, and Craig Keener disagree about who the eyewitness author of the gospel was, they agree that the gospel is an eyewitness document. Critics often mention that there’s widespread scholarly rejection of authorship by the son of Zebedee, but many of the scholars who reject authorship by the son of Zebedee acknowledge that much or all of the gospel comes from an eyewitness. Disagreeing over who the eyewitness was isn't equivalent to the common skeptical assertion that no eyewitness is behind it.

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  3. Disagreeing over who the eyewitness was isn't equivalent to the common skeptical assertion that no eyewitness is behind it.

    I agree. And I read your assessment with interest.

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